Archive for the ‘Uncategorized’ Category

By: myadmin • September 2, 2015

ROOTS embarked on The Not Ripe for Marriage campaign to end child marriages in Zimbabwe in November 2014. The overall objectives of the campaign were to build a movement of people with increased awareness on child marriages and committed to end the practice, influence change in the policy environment and advocate for legislative review and realignment of the customary law and marriage act to be pegged at the same age as the Legal Age of Majority (18). Ultimately the campaign which had a lot of activities targeting the grassroots level sought to see community members displaying a change in existing attitudes, behaviours and norms around child marriage and have community members beginning to exhibit commitment to end child marriage in their communities. Download Campaign Report

By: myadmin • August 31, 2015

Dialogue is essential in ending practices, norms and attitudes around child marriage. Today (16 June 2015), ROOTS team commemorated the Day of the African Child with more than 300 community members from David Small Farm, Shamva. We discussed practical solutions to end child marriage at the mining community. “We have the power to end child marriage, we need to value our girls and send them to school” said the community chairperson.

Several activities were conducted on the day, among them, traditional dances, poetry, and community dialogue sessions, all in the spirit appreciating the role played by the ‘African Child’. Key messages shared by community members were focused on the need to empower young girls through education and further training initiatives on their Sexual and Reproductive Health as a means to eradicate child marriage. However, the participation of males in these dialogue sessions was a reflection of the positive strides being made in ensuring that indeed child marriage is a factor that affects not only women in particular, but the entire community as a whole. This year’s commemorations were done under the theme “25 Years after the Adoption of the African Children’s Charter: Accelerating our Collective Efforts to End Child Marriage in Africa”

By: myadmin • August 31, 2015

Danny recounts the ROOTS street bash at Nyava Growth Point …

EDU-TAINMENT GALORE AT NYAVA

By Danny Nyamushamba

Edu-tainment is an influential tool in various campaigns. On the 11th of July 2015 ROOTS held a street bash at Nyava Growth Point in Bindura. The main objective of the street bash was to educate the community on sexual and reproductive health.

Issues addressed at Nyava included the need:

To improve access and utilization of SRHR services (including contraception) by adolescents;
To empower communities and their supporting organizations to claim and exercise ownership of their SRH rights;
To exercise control over one’s own sexuality and the associated rights;
To ensure that everyone has the right to decide what do with their own bodies without coercion, violence or discrimination
To continuously discuss the implications of early and forced marriages.

In attendance were 346 people with key stakeholders such as Chief Mutasa, parents, teachers – and youth, in attendance. Councilors and village heads of wards 14,15 and 18 were also present. Various organizations and government departments came to support ROOTS street bash, and we thank representatives from the NAC, Hope Humana, New Start, ZRP and the Ministry of Youth Indigenization and Economic Empowerment for coming.

The street bash gave an opportunity to young people to access free HIV/AIDS testing and counseling courtesy of New Start Centre. Chief Musana led by example as he was tested, together with 40 other people. A representative from New Start Centre showed that HIV/AIDS prevalence in Zimbabwe is at 15%. He encouraged the participants to get tested regardless of whether they were married or not. He emphasized the World Health Organization 2015 theme: “Zero new HIV infections, Zero discrimination and Zero AIDS-related deaths”. Furthermore he indicated that New Start Center seeks to improve access to prevention, treatment and care services for adolescents (10-19 years), a group that continues to be vulnerable despite efforts made thus far.

Councilor Mugabe of ward 14 acknowledged the good work done by ROOTS, as we target the young people who are future leaders and who are also the most vulnerable group to HIV/AIDS. He added that ROOTS should keep on engaging the community in its thematic areas. He encouraged the community to cease early and forced marriages saying that they amount to abuse and that girls need to be given the same opportunities to excel as boys.

Students from Nyava Primary School entertained attendees through traditional dance and poetry. There was a dancing and drama competition that took place and participants won hampers including hygiene products, soap, washing powder, face towels and rulers.

Meanwhile ROOTS our next stop was in Shamva where we held another street bash at More farm. Theret he main issue was early and forced marriages. More details to follow!

By: myadmin • August 31, 2015

The Southern African Development Community Parliamentary Forum (SADC-PF) and AWEPA hosted the Parliamentary Dialogue on Child Laws in Johannesburg South Africa on the 3^rd and 4^th of February.

The objective of the dialogue was to sensitize the Members of SADC-PF to the issue of child marriage and its consequences. A further goal was to convince them to take action within their respective Parliaments. to condemn Child Marriage as a violation of girls’ rights.

Loveness Mudzuru, a child bride who together with Ruvimbo Tsopodzi recently lodged a constitutional application challenging child marriages in Zimbabwe, shared her experience as a child bride and also called on the region to unite in the fight against child marriages.

“If we are to achieve zero new HIV infections, we need to protect girls from sexual violence including child marriage,” she said.

“I was young I did not understand anything about sex or contraceptives”, said Loveness sharing her experiences of how she fell pregnant at the age of 15. Loveness had a second child barely 6 months after giving birth to the first one.

Speaking at the same event, Ms Hendrica Okondo from World YWCA emphasized the need to ensure that children have gone through birth registration.

“The other complexities we are finding in our work in child marriage is when girls do not have a birth certificates it often is difficult to prove that they are under the age of marriage, it’s like they are non-existent” says Ms Hendrica Okondo in her keynote address.

“The inclusive nature of the participants attending this dialogue goes a long way to broaden the information base for the subject under discussion which is necessary in terms of developing a Model Law that discourages Child Marriages as it requires the exploration of all possible options in our increasingly complex policy environment, said Dr. Esau Chiviya the secretary general for SADC PF in his opening remarks.

The Regional Parliamentary Dialogue on Child Marriage Laws brought together representatives from: the Southern African Development Community Parliamentary Forum (SADC-PF), SADC Secretariat; experts; parliamentarians from the following priority countries (Malawi, Mauritius, Mozambique, Tanzania, Zambia and Zimbabwe); and representatives from Plan and AWEPA, World YWCA and ROOTS. ROOTS is currently running a campaign under the theme NOT RIPE FOR MARRIAGE as it steps up its efforts to end child marriages.